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Most of the U.S. Team and staff met in San Francisco on Thursday for the 12-hour flight to Osaka, Japan, leaving at 12:25 PM. Those on the flight were Team Leader Bob Fox, Men’s Coach Dan Seemiller, Women’s Coach Doru Gheorghe, myself, and seven of the ten players: Mark Hazinski, Eric Owens, Barney J. Reed, Ashu Jain, Jasna Reed, Tawny Banh and Simone Yang. Missing players were David Zhuang and Chang Gao Jun, who had flown over earlier, and Virginia Sung, who was working in a law office and was required in a court case, and would be coming over two days later. Others in the U.S. contingent would be flying over later.

Other than some turbulence that left some players a bit nauseous, the flight was relatively uneventful. The pilot announced over the loudspeaker system that the U.S. Table Tennis Team was aboard and on its way to the World Championships, and the passengers gave us a round of applause.

We landed at 4PM (local time) on Friday at Kansai Airport. The local time was 16 hours ahead of West Coast Time in the U.S., and 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time – so it was about midnight Thursday night in San Francisco, 3 AM on the east coast.

We were met at the airport by David Zhuang and Chang Gao Jun, and by five World Championships workers, holding World Championship signs ands and wearing orange World Championship jackets. Several spoke English, and we were guided to the bus that would take us to Osaka, one hour away. Everything was done extremely efficiently – "The Japanese are the most efficient people in the world," Dan said. He should know – he’d been to Japan about 20 times in his career.

There were complications regarding the box with our team uniforms, and rather than have us all wait while it went through customs, Team Leader Bob Fox stayed behind while the rest of us left. We didn’t see him again that night.

Throughout the drive, we had the Pacific (or a bay from the Pacific) on our left, and what amounted to one continuous city on our right. Everyone drove on the left side of the street, with steering wheels on the right side of the vehicle. We passed numerous baseball and golf fields, with netting to protect the crowded local areas from outgoing balls. Although most signs were in Japanese, many were in English.

We stopped off in Osaka at the hotel where registration took place, and we all received credentials and meal tickets. In addition, we all received "goodie bags" – which were very nice World Championship playing bags, filled with all sorts of items from sponsors, from umbrellas to alarm clocks. We were quite happy with this.

We arrived at the Miyako Hotel in Osaka around 6PM. After drop ping our bags off in our rooms, we went to dinner. For the duration of our stay, we will be eating in a buffet-style cafeteria; however, for this first meal, we were eating at a more authentic Japanese restaurant, with various courses served, rather than us choosing the courses. While most of us ate the food hungrily, some of us metaphorically turned green when the first dish served was squid. However, soon more American-looking food was served (steak, french fries, rice and salad), and vegetarian dishes were served to our three vegetarians (Eric Owens, Gao Jun and Ashu Jain). With the addition of the chocolate soon found in my bag, all appetites were soon satisfied. Then it was bedtime for most of us.

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